“We are united by remembrance”, was another Twitter from Kuchcinski, the Marshal of the Sejm, whereas Stanisław Karczewski, a Polish politician, tweeted “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started 75 years ago in Warsaw – the city of two uprisings. (…) They were killed but they are alive in our memory. (…)”.
During the German occupation in Poland in the beginning of 1940s, Warsaw provided the biggest ghetto in Europe, housing no less than 460,000 Jews. The peak was reached between January and March, year 1941.
Operation Reinhard was the codename that the Nazi applied to the vicious plan of exterminating as many Polish Jews in the country as possible, during WWII. The first stage of this plan happened between July and August, 1942. But one day, everything was about to change, as on April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out.
Around 750 Jewish fighters found the courage to confront a much larger German force, although the Jews were significantly lower armed compared to their opponents. Even so, these great fighters held out one month. Most of the Jewish fighters were killed by the German force, but some of them managed to escape the ghetto, due to some sewage canals that took them to the other side of the Warsaw.
This Thursday, paper daffodils were pinned to the clothes of all people in Poland in the memory of these courageous Jewish fighters. The daffodils tradition started with Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander that also fought in the uprising. Every year, in honor of this day, he used to lay daffodils at the monument of Warsaw Ghetto Heroes. He died in 2009.
Church bells tolled throughout the entire country at noon and sirens wailed,mourning the ones who fought and died that period. President Andrzej Duda was present at the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and paid homage to the many lives that perished during the WWII. Also, three of the few Holocaust survivors (Krystyna Budnicka, Helena Birenbaum and Marian Turski) who attended the ceremony at Warsaw’s Town Hall received honorary citizenship of the city.
